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Pilotless over the battlefield By MIKE GAINES
DESPITE the continuing political furore about the European
basing of Cruise Missiles, the philoso
phy of using an unmanned aircraft to
penetrate highly effective defence
screens is not a new one. The first
attempt at bringing a Remotely
Piloted Vehicle (RPV) into service in
Britain was during the First World
War. It was christened the Royal Fly
ing Corps Experimental World Aerial
Target, to conceal the true nature of
its mission.
Ground testing, in the Experimental
Works facility, housed in a Ohiswick
garage, revealed, however, that inter
ference from the aircraft's power-
plant, a 50 h.p. Gnome rotary engine,
played havoc with the "wireless
equipment." As this would have
rendered the aeroplane practically un
controllable, a test-flight was not
attempted.
In the United States, meanwhile,
the Curtiss Airplane Company was de
veloping, for the US Navy, an "Aerial
Torpedo," which, since it was not con
trolled in flight, was a drone rather
than an RPV. Flown in 1917, this
system utilised a Sperry gyroscope
with altitude hold controlled by an
aneroid system.
The aircraft was powered by a 40
h.p. Ford engine. The launch crew
estimated range and bearing to tar
get and with due allowance for wind
drift, pointed the launch rails in the
desired direction. Distance was
allowed for by loading only enough
fuel to take the vehicle a pre-
calculated range, at which the engine
stopped through lack of fuel. The
next step called for the automatic ex
traction of the wing-mounting bolts,
leaving the wingless fuselage loaded
with a 3001b-warhead over the target.
Not too accurate, but more than
adequate for bombardment of a large
area, as demonstrated by the German
V-l in 194445, which operated on the
same, albeit improved, principal.
The first true RPV to achieve real
success was probably the Royal Air
Force's Larynx. Designed by the
Royal Aircraft Establishment, Larynx
was an aerodynamically clean mono
plane with a closely cowled 200 h.p.
Armstrong Siddeley Lynx engine, a
streamlined round-section fuselage
and a cruciform tail. In February
1925, Larynx flew for 39min and
executed a total of 49 radio com
mands. It could carry a 2501b war
head for 300 miles at a speed of 193
m.p.h., and proved at last that a Re
motely Piloted Vehicle was feasible.
Following several diplomatically
embarrassing incidents in the early
Right Launch of
Northrops Chukar
derived Teds on
flight-test
Left Air launch of a
Mk. 81 Self Propelled
Air Surface
Munition (SPASM)
from a BGM-34B
RPV
1960s involving the crews of U-2s and
RB-47s, on reconnaissance and Elec
tronic Intelligence (Elint) gathering
flights, the United States Government
had to find a less volatile method of
fulfilling its reconnaissance needs in
politically sensitive areas.
One solution was satellite recon
naissance. Another was to adapt an
aircraft which could outpace the mis
siles of that time—this led, via the
Lockheed All/YF-12 projects, to the
SR-71 aircraft. The third solution was
to use an adaptation of a remotely
piloted aerial target system. Ryan
Teledyne's Model 124 series was the
ideal choice for conversion from an
aerial target to a remotely piloted
vehicle; it is politically easier to deny
knowledge of wreckage from an
illegal reconnaissance overflight which
has gone wrong if no aircrew is
directly involved.
After a lengthy gestation period,
the Model 124 begun operations over
North Vietnam, China and North
Korea in the mid-1960s. Known now
as the Model 147, or by the United
States Air Force designation of AGM-
34, this versatile RPV was operated
initially from Kadena airbase on
Okinawa.
As the Vietnam War escalated, the
launch aircraft were moved in-country
, M